


L'ange

by DictionaryWrites, Johannes_Evans



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artists, First Meetings, Flirting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25558459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johannes_Evans/pseuds/Johannes_Evans
Summary: Today, he’ll do it.Today, he’ll walk up to him, ask his name, introduce himself. Say, hey, you want to grab a coffee, maybe?No.
Relationships: Aimé Trudeau/Jean-Pierre Delacroix (OC)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Magic Beholden





	L'ange

Aimé Trudeau sits in the park, smoking his cigarette. He brings it up to his mouth, taking a delicate drag, tastes it on his tongue, feels the rush of it in his head, and he watches. For the third time this week, he observes the figure who, in his head, he has labelled _l’ange_. Aimé Trudeau sits in the park to paint and to sketch, enjoying the fresh air and avoiding the mould in his apartment, not to mention the fact that any amount of time locked up with oil paints is sure to poison him, but l’ange? He comes only to feed the ducks, and laugh, and walk like he has no cares in the world.

L’ange is across the park, laughing softly with the two men he’s always with – one of them is short and buff, with freckles scattered on his sun-tanned, rosy skin; the other is tall and broad and reserved in his expressions, his skin an ashy-brown that seems to warm from within under the bright, summer sun. Neither of them is a boyfriend, Aimé doesn’t think. Their affection is free with one another, but not romantic, not intimate. Either close friends, or maybe brothers who look little alike.

L’ange…

L’ange is _beautiful_.

His hair is a fine, soft golden colour, the colour of fresh wheat, and his skin is like porcelain, it looks so delicate, pale white that has turned just slightly brown with his summer’s tan, that looks like it belongs more to a doll than to a man. He has a fine nose, carved wonderfully, and plump, pretty lips that smile easily, and the way he _holds_ himself is the vision of grace and delicacy, even under his white blouse and his long, ill-fitting jumpers, the tight trousers he wears out of some jersey material.

Aimé has watched him for weeks, now. Not in a focused, creepy way, but merely taking note of him when he sees him in the park, seeing l’ange or l’ange’s friends walk this way and that. Sometimes, he catches himself staring at l’ange when his laugh takes him over, feeling his own lips shift into a smile in reflection of such complete and obvious joy.

Today, he’ll do it.

Today, he’ll walk up to him, ask his name, introduce himself. Say, hey, you want to grab a coffee, maybe?

No.

No, he won’t.

He—

“Excuse me,” says a soft voice, breathy and quiet, and Aimé looks up at l’ange. His eyes, Aimé notes for the first time, are a cocoa-rich brown, flecked with honey-coloured spots, and there is a tiny little scar on the underside of his left eye, crescent-shaped. “You’re the painter.”

“Just a painter,” Aimé says, his mouth running on autopilot. “No need for the definite article.”

“Ah,” says l’ange. “But you _are_ the definite article. I see your brushes, your paints…” He leans in, looking at the canvas on Aimé’s easel, and the sigh he lets out makes Aimé’s heart skip a beat in its chest, as breathless as it is, as _beautiful_ as it is. “What is your name?”

“Aimé.”

“Aimé… How lovely. And very true, no doubt?”

Aimé hopes his gulp isn’t as audible as it sounds in his own ears, even as his mouth says – without real permission from his brain, “And what’s yours? Can’t help but call you angel, in my head, with no name to use instead.”

L’ange peers down at him, his head tilting slightly to the side, and for just a moment, the golden flecks in his eyes seem all the brighter. “Angel?” he repeats softly, and his smile is like sunshine, warming Aimé’s skin. “You flatter me. My name is Jean-Pierre. I’m here with my brothers, Ash and Colm.”

He gestures with a hand that looks like it was crafted from china, each fingernail painted a perfect, luscious red, but chipping and peeling in places, and Aimé follows his gaze to the men by the ice cream stand. The taller one with the reserved expressions is smiling, just slightly, his eyes dark; the buff one is _grinning_ , and he waves brightly in their direction.

Aimé swallows again.

“You paint here every day,” says Jean-Pierre. “I’ve seen you.”

“I’ve seen you too.”

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre says softly. “But I will not be here for the next week, and perhaps the next one. I have been gifted by another of my brothers a boxset of the television show, _The Sopranos_. I plan to stay in bed and watch it the way through, until I have completed it.”

“O— Oh,” Aimé says, baffled. “Right.”

“I am told _The Sopranos_ heralded the start of what we now refer to as _complex television_ ,” Jean-Pierre says haltingly, as if he had been trying to move the conversation in a certain direction, and now thinks he’s misstepped. Aimé stares up at him, his lips parted. It isn’t every day a beautiful man comes up to you and tells you he won’t be leaving his bed until he’s finished an iconic TV show.

“I’ve never seen it,” Aimé says. “I hear it’s good.”

“So I am told,” Jean-Pierre says. A beat passes. Jean-Pierre goes on, “I thought you might join me.”

“In— In bed?”

“Or on the sofa, if you would prefer,” Jean-Pierre says. “You don’t have to stop painting. Merely that…” He trails off, and then he says, quietly, “I like that you are here, in the park, painting. It makes me smile, to think of you here, but there is rain forecast for next week, and I should like to think of you painting inside. It should be very easy to think of you as such, if you are sitting next to me.”

“Is— Sorry, I can’t tell if this is meant to be a date or not.”

“I think not,” Jean-Pierre says. “More… several dates in quick succession. This doesn’t meet with your approval?”

“What if you hate me? You don’t know anything about me.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“No.”

“A conservative?”

“No!”

“Then I won’t hate you,” Jean-Pierre says, and smiles a sweet smile of white pearls. Aimé feels dizzy.

“You really don’t know how to talk to people, do you?” Aimé asks.

“No,” Jean-Pierre says. “I have yet to get the hang of it. You might teach me.”

“I can’t teach you,” Aimé says. “I’m no good either.” He gets to his feet, and he looks at l’ange, who is the same height as Aimé – not tall, not tall at all, but he _seems_ taller, Aimé thinks, because of how lithe his body is, because of something in the way he holds himself, his chin high, his shoulders back. “ _The Sopranos_?”

“Yes.”

Jean-Pierre watches as Aimé packs up his paints, one canvas under his arm.

“Lead the way.”

Jean-Pierre’s cheeks, which are delicate and pale, turn pink, and he turns his face away for a moment, but then steps in closer, and his arm interlinks with the arm Aimé has free, without a canvas underneath it. His fingers are warm on Aimé’s arm.

“There is just— One thing,” Jean-Pierre says.

“Oh?”

“I’m dreadfully sensitive to the smell of cigarettes,” he says. “I must ask you to smoke outsi—”

Aimé stubs his cigarette against the side of the bin before he tosses it in, and for good measure, takes the packet in his front pocket and tosses those into the pin too. Jean-Pierre, wide-eyed and lips parted, gazes at him, and then bursts into giggles that make Aimé laugh too.

“You didn’t have to do that,” says Jean-Pierre.

“Of course I did,” Aimé replies.

“I can’t believe that worked,” says the tall brother – Ash – when they approach.

“I told you that it would,” says Colm, and Aimé walks silently with Jean-Pierre, arm-in-arm, his head full with dizzy excitement. Beside him, Jean-Pierre radiates delight and pleasure, and Aimé feels as if he could drown in it.


End file.
